Issue in Focus: Assessing the Cloud PLM Opportunity: Evaluating the Benefits, Requirements, and Considerations explores the opportunity to leverage cloud computing technology with PLM (Product Lifecycle Management). The paper is intended to help companies evauluating PLM in the cloud by sharing information and experiences from more mature cloud enterprise applications including CRM.
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Table of Contents
- Introducing the Issue
- The Cloud Meets PLM
- Evaluating the Key Features and Benefits of Cloud Computing
- Leverage Economies of Scale
- Eliminate Non-Value Added Work
- Take Advantage of Cloud Level Systems Performance
- Enhance Flexibility and Agility, Reduce Business Risk
- Final Considerations
- Conclusion
- Recommendations
- About the Author
Introducing the Issue
Tech-Clarity research shows that Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) offers manufacturers the ability to increase revenue, decrease product cost, and reduce product development costs. How does PLM do this? A successful PLM initiative improves business performance by enhancing data management, streamlining business processes, enabling better collaboration, and enabling better product development and engineering decision-making.
From a data perspective, PLM brings all product information into one comprehensive location. It integrates data from different aspects of the product in a meaningful way, providing the ability for manufacturers to control, access, and share this information across their business. Not only can companies share product information with a broader array of people, they can also extend the value of the information by integrating it with product-oriented processes to coordinate activities. This allows multiple disciplines to provide input to develop optimal products. It also improves performance by providing accurate, up-to-date information from early concept design through service to the people that need product data to play their part in delivering profitable products.
This paper assumes that the “return” portion of the PLM ROI (return on investment) discussed above is relatively well known and focuses on how to achieve the benefits rapidly with the least investment. The potential benefits have been available for some time in the current generation of PLM systems. Now, the introduction of cloud PLM offerings allows this value to be delivered in a new way. Cloud offerings have the potential to change the way PLM solutions are delivered and improve the ROI by reducing the investment required to achieve the benefits.